Documents / Document

FAA news releases

FAA via National Archives / The Black Vault · 10 pages · text from the file's own layer

This set of Federal Aviation Administration Alaskan Region news releases and notes, dated December 1986 to March 1987, covers the Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 sighting of November 17, 1986. It includes interview notes with Captain Kenjyu Terauchi's crew. The FAA said it could not confirm the event and attributed the second radar target to a split radar return from the 747. The releases also describe an Alaska Airlines weather radar sighting and Terauchi's January 1987 lights, which were attributed to ice crystals.

Paul Steucke
FAA, Public Affairs Officer
Alaskan Region
701 C Street, Box 14
Anchorage, Alaska 99513
March 5, 1987
LACK CF nscIEHTIFIC" INVESTIGATION
The Federal Aviation Administration has a number of employees who do
scientific research with regard to aircraft, aviation, and related electronic
equipment. The FAA does not have the resources or the Congressional mandate to
investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects.
We have not tried to determine what the crew of Japan Airlines flight 1628
saw based on scientific analysis of the stars, planets, magnetic fields, angle
of view, etc. We have received letters from several persons suggesting that we
ask the crew and others a variety of detailed questions from a scientific
viewpoint. This we have not done and do not intend to do. We reviewed the data
that was created by our systems, the interviews that were done by FAA to
detennine the status of the crew and the aircraft, and have provided that
information to the public.
The FAA has completed its investigation of JAL flight 1628, and does not
intend to pursue it any further."
II II
J

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 10 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.